InDesign CC 2015 offers paragraph shading in ePUBs

Another incremental release? Of course…

But that’s to be expected. The whole paradigm of the subscription model is that the applications keep getting better and you get an automatic update as soon as it is released. There’s been a huge amount of work put into InDesign CC (2015), but most of it does not apply to us: producers of the artwork published as books in print and as ebooks. However, one of the new abilities is very helpful. It finally allows us to use shading in back of a paragraph which exports beautifully to ePUB3.

Paragraph shading is exciting

This is something I’ve been asking for over the past five or six years as ePUBs have become a viable way to sell books. I’ll get to the positives in a bit. First the negative: it doesn’t work in Kindle. Surprised? Why? Kindle is getting further and further behind as they rest on their laurels. However, it is a pain that there is now yet another reason why your Kindle books need a separate document with its own formatting.

As you know, I recently posted that it is necessary to export an IDML version of your ebook and then use CS6 to export your Kindle book. I no longer do that. Kindle Previewer seems to convert the ePUB3 into something readable. But it will be missing many of the easy things you put into your ePUBs. Always remember, Kindle is not a quality option for ebooks—it is simply the most popular option. On a quality level between 1 and 10, I’d give it a 2 or 3. The only option with lower quality is Smashwords.

So, what’s the big deal?

First of all, it gives us something with which to convert our sidebars. With a single-column story as we find in reflow ePUBs and MOBIs, sidebars need to be dropped into the normal stream of the story. Now we can indicate a sidebar with a colored background. This will also serve the purpose of lessening the strength of the sidebars making them into what they are supposed to be: supportive reading for the good readers.

Secondly, I can stop using tables for many items. Tables do not read well in many ereaders [notably Kindles], and this gives us—wait. This doesn’t work in Kindle either. )(&*%$!

The hope is that as this feature is further developed, we’ll see borders, corner controls, and so on.

Excellent news! You can use gradient shading for these backgrounds, but only linear left to right.

Publish online

I hesitate to even mention this in this blog, because it is not publishing as we know it. There is a button in the Application Bar that reads Publish Online. It works very well. It creates output that uploads to one of Adobe’s servers. There is no option, at present to apply security measures, to sell your document from Adobe’s servers, or read it anywhere other than your browser. So, it’s not publishing as we need it everyday.

Plus, I’m sure I do not have to tell you how many times Adobe has tried to force us to use their servers and later dropped the project and usually the entire availability. Remember the proofing and commenting process for books called Adobe CS Review. It worked very well, but lasted less than a year as I recall.

This feature works very well, but only in the English versions so far. It’s basically a capability beta, a tech preview. It can contain animations, videos, sound, and the whole nine yards.

It will work for freebies. It would seem to be helpful for internal networks in large companies. It will greatly simplify the publishing of the company newsletter. But then, internal networks are not likely to accept something published on an Adobe server. This may become something very good, though. Let’s see what future updates bring.

The massive work done with a CC Libraries

They’ve done a wonderful job of building a difficult capability I never wanted or asked for. I realize that large companies, and massive workflows use libraries a lot. But self-publishers generally do not. So, this is nothing to most of us. This is a library of images, styles, and all of that, which works between Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. I’m not sure how far it goes into the CC stable of apps. If you’re interested, you should check it out.

Graphic cells in tables

Now you can choose whether you want a table cell to be a graphic cell or a text cell. I never had any problems with placing graphics into an insertion point before. I’ll still keep doing it the old way, unless I hear of some use for this which really matters.

I’m sure a lot of this is colored by the issues with tables in ePUBs and MOBIs. Now that tables work much better for ePUB3, this may become more helpful to our workflows in the future.

An artist, illustrator, graphic designer, art director, typographer, author and publisher [in that order] since 1967. Radiqx Press is an independent Christian on-demand publisher pushing the envelope for Kingdom as we have experienced it.

Comments

InDesign CC 2015 offers paragraph shading in ePUBs — 6 Comments

Add borders and shading to paragraphs
Quickly and easily add borders and shading to paragraphs without manual workarounds. Highlights adjust automatically as you edit text, even if it flows across columns. Plus, you have controls for offsets and more.https://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/features.html

Thanks for a great overview of the update. I suspected one was coming soon when the CC app updated on Monday. 2015 came to Adobe in June this year.

I fully agree that Kindle is slipping further and further behind in comparison to those building on epub. It could indicate that Amazon is secretly planning to go epub itself. More likely it just means Amazon doesn’t care. It makes most of its money with books that don’t require complex formatting. My policy has been to simply send them an epub 3.0 and live with the results as long as the ebook looks tolerable. Eventually readers will pick up on how second class Kindle books are and perhaps move to other platforms.

I’m delighted by shading and that it works in epub. I suspect borders will be available soon, since they’re listed in Adobe’s list of improvements:

—–
Add borders and shading to paragraphs
Quickly and easily add borders and shading to paragraphs without manual workarounds. Highlights adjust automatically as you edit text, even if it flows across columns. Plus, you have controls for offsets and more.https://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/features.html
—–

Sorry about that other posting with just the Adobe quote. Don’t know how it happened. It just did.

Also, If someone would like to help me out, my latest book, Senior Nurse Mentor, is being done as favor to over-worked, under-appreciated hospital nurses. I want the digital version to be free, but Amazon won’t let me do that. I have to make it free elsewhere and let Amazon pout and price-match. I need someone to fink on me to make Amazon cut the price.

Hopefully, this won’t mean a nasty cease and desist letter from Amazon lawyers. I do hate it when lawyers do that. Dealing with them is likely trying to calm down a two-year-old throwing a temper tantrum.

Good article. I’m currently running ID 5.5. I have just released my 170 page 6×9 book “Intimacy With God: One Man’s Journey” (journey.roboberto.com) on 6/4 through Amazon. CreateSpace is working on creating an ebook–they said they would do it for free. I’ve got a lot of other things to do for the book launch right now, so I’d like to offload that work if I can. Yet, I do want a quality ebook. I’ll see how well they do. If I have to continue my own formatting efforts for the Kindle version I will.

As I look toward the non-Kindle world, who do you recommend for converting a book to an ebook and distributing it? You don’t recommend Smashwords, so who could you recommend?

The best tool for converting to an ebook right now is InDesign CC (2015). All the converters want you to submit a Word document, and Word is not capable of good typography without a lot of work. Even then, Word has several things it simply cannot do.

For a conversion, I’ve been recommending Draft2Digital. The authors I’ve heard from really like it.
For me, personally, I sell nearly twice as much through D2D as I do through SW. BUT, my bestsellers are too large for Smashwords so I cannot sell them there.

Thank you for the quick reply. It looks like my best option is to upgrade my InDesign 5.5 to CC(2015), create the EPUB, and distribute through Draft2Digital. I’ll be sure to verify my backups before upgrading. I usually do, but I’d hate to damage my published 5.5 files. I’ve been reading your book on writing with InDesign.

I rarely use phones.
Email is best:
david at bergsland dot org
275 Sandalwood Dr,
Rochester, NY 14616
This site uses the pseudonyms of Bergsland Design for design work; and Radiqx Press for publishing. Both of these have been used for some time beginning in the past millennium. The Skilled Workman is over a decade old dealing with spiritual teachings about our Messiah and the Holy Spirit he sent to us to help us.
If you want to meet Jesus, click here.

Our website may contain affiliate marketing links, which means we may get paid commission on sales of those products or services we write about. Our editorial content is not influenced by advertisers or affiliate partnerships. This disclosure is provided in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR § 255.5: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.